Some argue for levelling up to calling everyone Sir, others for calling all teachers by first names. Another says she doesn't care provided she isn't addressed as "Oi! You!", and one deputy head has ditched the title "second mistress" on the grounds that she is nobody's mistress, still less their second.

The debate was sparked by Jennifer Coates, who became a volunteer at her local secondary school in London, and was correctly introduced by the head as Professor Coates, distinguished former head of the department of English language and Linguistics at the University of Roehampton. "Good morning, Professor Coates," the children chorused politely. Then the head left the room, a girl put up her hand, and asked "Miss, Miss can you help me?"

Coates was extremely surprised because all male staff were addressed as Sir. "I didn't think there was this awful disparity between professorial status and these young teachers, but they're all Sir and I'm not. It's a depressing example of how women are given low status and men, no matter how young or new in the job they are, are given high status."

Education historian Jacob Middleton explains that the first women teachers were invariably unmarried, and so addressed as Miss, while male teachers reinforced their occasionally shakey social status by insisting on Sir. Now, he says, "You probably want to go down the route of referring to female teachers as Sir as well. Raise the semantic status of women."

Coates, however, would be no happier with that: "Sir is a knight. There weren't women knights, but Miss is ridiculous: it doesn't match Sir at all. It's just one of the names you can call an unmarried woman."